#TBRChallenge Review: Meant-To-Be Family

The Book: Meant-To-Be Family by Marion Lennox

The Particulars: Harlequin Medical Romance #734, Book 2 in Midwives On-Call continuity series, 2015, out of print, available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: After discovering Marion Lennox a few years back I started glomming her backlist. My records indicate this was a used bookstore find back in 2019.

🧨 Warning: All The Spoilers! 🧨

The Review: One might think that the hostess of this challenge would be ahead of the curve and not procrastinate. You would be wrong. It was Saturday afternoon before I went looking for a book that fit this month's Second Chance theme, and I figured my cupboard full of Harlequins was a good place to start. This was the second book I pulled off the shelf, it fit the theme perfectly, and I knew with Lennox writing I was going to get some angst - and boy howdy, did I get the angst.  The spoiler warning? Yeah, that's because this book has some heavy trigger warnings. This review is basically a public service.

Emily Evans is having a day. Her foster daughter isn't doing well and she's distraught. Gretta has Down's Syndrome and an inoperable heart condition. The little girl is dying.  Emily knew going into this that Gretta would die. There's nothing anybody can do. Her mother, who helps Emily with Gretta (age 4) and her foster son Toby (age 2) practically pushes Emily out the door to work, which she's running late for. She's a midwife at Melbourne's Victoria Hospital, a job she loves and while her ice queen boss is in a better mood these days thanks to her recent engagement, there's still gonna be hell to pay for being late.  Naturally it all goes from bad to worse when she swings her sturdy family sedan into her parking place only to side-swipe a flashy vintage Morgan. Could this day get any worse?  The answer is yes, yes it could.  Because the man sitting behind the wheel of the Morgan is none other than her estranged husband, Dr. Oliver Evans.

Of all the hospitals in all the world, he had to walk into hers. Oliver and Emily were married ten years ago, five of which were spent on heartbreaking, grueling IVF treatments.  Finally they get pregnant, only to have their son, Josh, be delivered as a premature stillborn. Emily puts her foot down after that. She's done with IVF. She cannot do it anymore. But she desperately wants children (as does Oliver) and she tells him, let's look into adoption.  Oliver snaps.  This man, yes THIS MAN, tells her "Em, I can't. I know adoption's the only way, but I can't do it. I can't guarantee to love a child who's not our own." Shortly thereafter they separate. That was five years ago.

Medicals are one of Harlequin's slimmer lines (about the length of a Presents or Desire) and there is A TON to unpack here. The reader learns about what split up Oliver and Emily in Chapter 2, so pretty early on you're going to hate this guy. Of course there's a backstory to why Oliver feels the way  he does about adoption - he was adopted. His parents ended up getting pregnant some years after he was adopted and once they had "their own son" they literally start comparing Oliver to a cuckoo. Oliver grows up, becomes a doctor, marries a wonderful woman - none of that matters. He's not their "real" son. So while I wanted to throat-punch Oliver, one would see how he would have hang-ups about adoption.

Emily is the exact opposite.  This is a woman brimming with love. The kind of woman who gives freely of herself, even though she knows it will open her up to heartache. Her and Oliver never divorced. They're still married at the start of this story, and she finds that telling. She moved on. She became a foster mother. Oliver did go to the States, continued his training, but there's been no one else. No new girlfriends, no children (even though he too wants children), nothing. 

This entire book is an emotional gut-punch. Oliver is emotionally broken, and what Emily realizes over the course of this story is that he was that way before they even met and got married. Oliver was damaged goods when they said "I do" - but it took the heartbreak of their journey towards starting a family to unravel their relationship.  I also really appreciated that it was the dude hung up on "we can't have 'our own' children" BS that runs amok in the genre.  So often it's the heroine flailing herself against those rocks.  This is also a romance where the ethical issues of the couples' jobs aren't hand-waved away for the sake of getting the couple a happy ending.  These two have to work for it, and it comes in the form of Oliver learning that found family can be the sweetest family of all.

That said, there's a lot of landmines in this story.  Remember Gretta?  This is a book with no miracle cure. The four-year-old girl dies over the course of the story folks, don't say you weren't warned.  Also, while I'm glad Oliver realizes what an ass he is, that he learns to open himself up to love and all the good and bad that goes along with that, this is a dude who needs therapy.  Like, no joke. Emily actually mentions it to him once, that the hospital has some very qualified folks he could talk to, but it doesn't happen over the course of the story.  Sure, sure, he and Emily reunite and live happily-ever-after but true love does not unravel the years of emotional abuse that Oliver experienced with his adoptive parents (thank the sweet Lord they stay off page). Couple this with Gretta's death, and that Toby also has health issues, when stress meets Oliver's baggage - I'd like to believe he'll have the tools in place to not backslide - and I'm not entirely convinced he does by the end of the story.

The secondary characters are welcome additions (Emily's mother, her neighbors who were FANASTIC!) and while this is part of a continuity series, it stands alone well.  It's not a book for everybody.  It's very emotional, dealing with the very heavy and painful topic of infertility and the death of a child. I didn't read this so much as inhale it but I recognize it's a lot. It's the sort of book I recommend but with a lot of caveats thrown in, because I can completely understand some folks reading this review and automatically nope'ing right out.  I think it's a triumph for Lennox, but oh man, is it ever complicated.

Final Grade = B+